Objekt des Monats
Jedes Objekt in der Sammlung des Deutschen Auswandererhauses erzählt eine ganz persönliche Auswanderungs- oder Einwanderungsgeschichte. In dieser Rubrik stellen wir Ihnen jeden Monat ein anderes Objekt vor – eine Fotografie, ein Dokument oder ein persönliches Erinnerungsstück.
October 2020
Employment certificate from 1982
Historical Context
October 3, 1990 is linked in Germany to the memory of disappearing borders and a unified German state. However, what is often only mentioned in passing, even today, 30 years later, are the effects of this event on the people who until then had worked as so-called contract workers in the GDR.
Most contract workers came from Southern Vietnam and Mozambique to the GDR. On February 24, 1979, the General Secretary of the SED Central Committee and Chairman of the State Council of the GDR, Erich Honecker, and the President of the People’s Republic of Mozambique, Samora Moises Machel, signed the “Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation” between the GDR and Mozambique in Maputo. The GDR leadership used the labor agreement to reduce debts. The East German state had created a foreign trade surplus of approximately 200 million US dollars with Mozambique in 1978 and 1979. To pay off this debt, the transfer payments earned by Mozambican workers as part of their wages in East Germany were used, as well as social security and pension contributions that were to remain in the GDR if applicable.
Short Biography Adelino Massuvira João
Adelino Massuvira João knows nothing of the debt repayment agreement when he is trained as an interpreter in Mozambique in 1980 and finally arrives at Berlin-Schönefeld Airport on a cold December night of the same year. Initially, he was promised a place in a study program during his application.
“Studying abroad was my dream. I wanted to achieve something and then apply my knowledge in Mozambique.”
He finds the training as an interpreter useful, as he already masters the language for a subsequent study. However, nothing comes of it, even though his travel documents refer to him as a ‘student’. With a break in 1982, Massuvira João works there until the end of the GDR, sometimes as a worker, sometimes as an apprentice. In his interpreter work, he repeatedly sees how many of his colleagues struggle with homesickness. They live in close proximity to their workplace, and there is not much interaction with the GDR residents. He and his Mozambican colleagues are unaware of the demonstrations against the GDR leadership in 1989. However, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, suddenly half of the German workforce has vanished – to the West. Some return, some do not. During the upheaval, the factory workers are initially sent to short-time work and then laid off. The contract workers are offered two options: either they leave the country immediately and receive 3000 marks as severance pay, or they leave within the next three months, during which they receive 70 percent of their salary and can prepare for their return. Adelino Massuvira João only learns that he also has the right to stay from a colleague actively involved in the union. He applies for a residence permit, works for a furniture packaging company, and then becomes the foreigner representative. Finally, he fulfills his dream and studies social pedagogy and Protestant theology in Dresden. Today, he is a social pedagogue and deacon in Suhl (Thuringia).
Significance of the object
Adelino Massuvira João’s work certificate shows only a minimal wage; pension and social benefits through the GDR are excluded. This seems to not be a problem for the workers: Because 60 percent of the salary that exceeds 350 Marks – so promises the Mozambican state – goes into private savings accounts of the contract workers or is paid as a social contribution. However, with the end of the contracts, former contract workers face a rude awakening: Their savings accounts hold only a small balance, and there are no pension entitlements from their time in Germany. Additionally, returnees are discriminated against in their home country when searching for jobs. Adelino Massuvira João says today:
„In retrospect, we learn through our own research that we were exploited.”
That is why he fights today for the recognition of the injustice and compensation from the Federal Republic of Germany – because it is, after all, the legal successor to the GDR. And he wonders why, even 30 years after the reunification of Germany, this injustice is hardly addressed in the German public.
Do you also …
… have a migration or immigration story from your family to share and want to hand it over to the German Emigration Center along with the related objects and documents for its collection? Then please contact Dr. Tanja Fittkau at the phone number 0471 / 90 22 0 – 0 or by email at: t.fittkau@dah-bremerhaven.de
Archive: Previous Objects of the Month
Show all objectsDo You Also Have …
… a story of emigration or immigration in your family that you would like to share with the German Emigration Center together with the related objects and documents for its collection? Then please contact Dr. Tanja Fittkau by phone at +49 471 / 90 22 0 – 0
or by e-mail at: t.fittkau@dah-bremerhaven.de